OBITUARY

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 80, 2 October 1933, Page 8

OBITUARY

EARL OF RANFURLY

EX-GOVERNOR OF NEW ZEALAND

United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON, October 1. The death is announced of the Earl of Banfurly, formerly Governor of New Zealand.

The Earl of Ranfurly, the fifth of his family to hold that title, was born ' in 1856 and was a younger son of the third carl who married a daughter of James Rimmington, of Broomlicad Hall, Yorkshire. The lato earl mar-, rjed in 1880 the Hon. Constance Elizabeth Caulfeild, who died last year. Ho was e'dueated at Harrow and'at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was a Lord-in Waiting to tho Queen from 1895 to 1897. ..;. ; : •'.■■■

Tho earldom dates from 1831 and the carl held the Order of G.C.M.G., which he received in 1897 and was a Privy Councillor of Ireland since 1905. The titles of Baron Welles (1781), Viscount Northland (1791), and Baron Ranfurly, of the United Kingdom, are also held. The late earl sat in the House of Lords as a Baron of the United Kingdom. The original barony and viscountey were conferred upon Thomas Knox, who had for many years been M.P. for Dungannon. The earldom followed "to his son and successor who five years previously had received the Barony of the United Kingdom. The late earl was a Bailiff Grand Cross of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, a director of the Colonial Mutual Life Assurance Company, and from 1897 to 1904 was Governor of ■New Zealand. His scat w^aa at Northland House, Dungannon, County Tyrone, and his heir bears the title Viscount Northland. The suburb of Northland was named after the carl's son, Thomas Uchtcr " Caulfeild Knox, who was born in 18S2 and was a captain in the Coldstream Guards. He was killed in action in 1915, threo years after his marriage, and tho present viscount is his son and the earl's grandson, and is twenty years old.

Some years ago the earl sought to sell Northland House. Lord Eanfurly was a descendant of the famous William Perm, the Quaker, and founder of Pennsylvania, and" if it were not for a microbe would probably have boon an admiral.

The microbe was one of scarlatina, and he was seized with it when ho was a child, in 18G9. His recovery was so slow that he had to leave the Navy, and after some years at Harrow and Cambridge went to Australia to grow oranges and lemons. He once-secured a specimen* of an extremely rare bird, known as the Southern Merganser. Up to fifty years ago. the bird was only known by a single specimen in one of the Paris museums.